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Pacific-12 Conference
The Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) is a college athletic conference that operates in the Western United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's 12 members (which are primarily flagship research universities in their respective regions, well-regarded academically, and with relatively large student enrollment) compete in 22 NCAA sports. It was founded as the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) in 1915, which principal members founded the (Athletic Association of Western Universities) (AAWU) in 1959, and went by the names Big Five, Big Six, Pacific-8, Pacific-10, becoming the Pacific-12 in 2011. The "Conference of Champions," the Pac-12 has won more NCAA National Team Championships than any other conference in history; the top three schools with the most NCAA team championships belong to the Pac-12 (UCLA, Stanford and USC, in that order). With Arizona State's softball title in 2011, the conference won its 400th NCAA Championship. The current commissioner of the conference is Larry Scott who replaced Thomas C. Hansen, who retired in July 2009 after 26 years in that position. Prior to joining the Pac-10, Scott was Chairman and CEO of the Women's Tennis Association.Pacific-10 Conference Names Larry Scott Commissioner Membership Full members Former members No school has left the Pacific-12 since its founding as the AAWU in 1959. Two members of the PCC never joined the AAWU. History Pacific Coast Conference The roots of the Pac-12 Conference go back to December 2, 1915, when the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded at a meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Portland, Oregon.(Portland) Oregon Daily Journal, December 3, 1915. "Four Colleges Form Coast Conference at Very Secret Session" Charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University). The conference began play in 1916. One year later, Washington State College (now Washington State University) joined the league, followed by Stanford University in 1918. In 1922, the PCC expanded to eight teams with the admission of USC and Idaho. Montana joined the Conference in 1924, and in 1928, the PCC grew to 10 members with the addition of UCLA. For many years, the conference split into two divisions for basketball—a Southern Division comprising the four California schools and a Northern Division comprising the six schools in the Pacific Northwest. In 1950, Montana departed to join the Mountain States Conference. The PCC continued as a nine-team league through 1958. AAWU (Big Five and Big Six) Following a "pay-for-play" scandal at several PCC institutions (specifically California, USC, UCLA and Washington), the PCC disbanded in 1959. When those four and Stanford started talking about forming a new conference, retired Admiral Thomas J. Hamilton interceded and suggested the schools consider creating a "power conference." Nicknamed the "Airplane Conference", the five PCC schools would have played with other big schools including Army, Navy, Air Force, Notre Dame, Penn, Penn State, Duke, and Georgia Tech among others. The effort fell through when a Pentagon official vetoed the idea and the service academies backed out.Dunnavant, Keith. "The 50 Year Seduction." Thomas Dunne Books: New York, 2004 On July 1, 1959 the new Athletic Association of Western Universities was formed, with California, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington as charter members. The conference also was popularly known as the Big Five from 1960 to 62;NCAA Men's Basketball Records - Division I conference alignment history (PDF copy available at NCAA.org) when Washington State joined in 1962, the conference was then informally known as the Big Six. Pacific-8 Oregon and Oregon State joined in 1964. With the addition of the two Oregon schools, the conference became known unofficially as the Pacific-8 (as there already was a Big Eight Conference). Idaho was never invited to join the AAWU; the Vandals were independent for four years until the formation of the Big Sky Conference in 1963. In 1968, the AAWU formally renamed itself the Pacific-8 Conference, or Pac-8 for short. Pacific-10 In 1978, the conference added WAC schools Arizona and Arizona State, to create the Pacific-10 Conference or Pac-10. In the mid-1990s the conference expressed interest in admitting the University of Colorado, as well as the University of Texas after the collapse of the Southwest Conference. Texas expressed an interest in joining a strong academic conference, but joined three fellow SWC schools (Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor) to combine with the Big Eight Conference to form the Big 12 Conference in 1996. Colorado elected at the time to remain in the newly-formed Big 12 Conference.Mark Wangrin - "Power brokers: How tagalong Baylor, Tech crashed the revolt". San Antonio Express, August 14, 2005 Before the addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011, only one Division I conference, the Ivy League, had maintained its membership for a longer time than the Pac-10. Commissioner Larry Scott said on February 9, 2010, that the window for expansion by the conference was open for the next year as the conference began negotiations for a new television deal. Speaking on a conference call to introduce former Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg as his new deputy, Scott talked about possibly adding new teams to the conference and launching a new television network. Scott, the former head of the Women’s Tennis Association, took over the conference in July 2009. In his first eight months on the job, he saw growing interest from the membership over the possibility of adding teams for the first time since Arizona and Arizona State joined the conference in 1978. Pacific-12 In early June 2010, there were reports that the Pac-10 would be considering adding up to six teams to the conference, including Texas Tech University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, or possibly Baylor University and Texas A&M University. On June 10, 2010, the University of Colorado at Boulder officially accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective in the 2012–2013 academic year. http://www.pac-10.org/genrel/061010aaa.html The school later announced it would join the conference a year earlier than previously announced, in the 2011-2012 academic year. On June 15, 2010, a deal was reached between Texas and the Big 12 Conference to keep Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in the Big 12. Following Texas' decision, the other Big 12 schools that had been rumored candidates to join the Pac-10 announced they would remain in the Big 12. This deal effectively ended the Pac-10's ambition to potentially become a sixteen-team conference.Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State stay put in Big 12 Conference - ESPN On June 17, 2010, the University of Utah officially accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective in the 2011–2012 school year. Utah was a member of the WAC with Arizona and Arizona State before those two left for the Pac-10. The Utes joined the Pac-12 from the Mountain West Conference. Utah is also the first "BCS Buster" to join a BCS conference, having played in (and won) two BCS games beforehand, and one of the first to leave the MWC, of which Utah was a charter member. On July 27, 2010, the conference unveiled a new logo and announced that the Pac-10 would be renamed to the Pac-12 when two new universities would join the conference. On October 21, 2010 the Pac-12 announced that it would be divided into two divisions for purposes of football, with the North Division consisting of the schools in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California and the South Division consisting of Colorado, Utah, and the schools in Arizona and Southern California. On July 1, 2011 the Pac-12 assumed its current alignment when both Colorado and Utah officially joined as full members. To this day, the Pac-12 claims the PCC's history as its own. It inherited the PCC's berth in the Rose Bowl, and the eight largest schools in the old PCC all eventually joined the new league. However, the older league had a separate charter. Membership timeline DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:1915 till:2020 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:10 left:20 bottom:50 top:0 Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:line value:black id:bg value:white PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:skyblue from:1915 till:end text:University of California, Berkeley (1915–present) bar:2 color:skyblue from:1915 till:end text:University of Washington (1915–present) bar:3 color:skyblue from:1915 till:1959 text:University of Oregon (1915–1959) bar:3 color:skyblue from:1964 till:end text:University of Oregon (1964–present) bar:4 color:skyblue from:1915 till:1959 text:Oregon State University (1915–1959) bar:4 color:skyblue from:1964 till:end text:Oregon State University (1964–present) bar:5 color:skyblue from:1917 till:1959 text:Washington State University (1917–1959) bar:5 color:skyblue from:1962 till:end text:Washington State University (1962–present) bar:6 color:skyblue from:1918 till:end text:Stanford University (1918–present) bar:7 color:skyblue from:1922 till:end text:University of Southern California (1922–present) bar:8 color:skyblue from:1922 till:1959 text:University of Idaho (1922–1959) bar:9 color:skyblue from:1924 till:1950 text:University of Montana (1924–1950) bar:10 color:skyblue from:1928 till:end text:University of California, Los Angeles (1928–present) bar:11 color:skyblue from:1978 till:end text:University of Arizona (1978–present) bar:12 color:skyblue from:1978 till:end text:Arizona State University (1978–present) bar:13 color:skyblue from:2011 till:end shift:( -165, -5) text: University of Colorado at Boulder (2011–present) bar:14 color:skyblue from:2011 till:end shift:( -95, -5) text: University of Utah (2011–present) bar:N color:blue from:1915 till:1959 text:Pacific Coast Conference bar:N color:powderblue from:1959 till:1968 text:AAWU bar:N color:blue from:1968 till:1978 text:Pacific-8 bar:N color:powderblue from:1978 till:2011 text:Pacific-10 bar:N color:blue from:2011 till:end text:Pacific-12 ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1915 TextData = fontsize:L textcolor:black pos:(190,30) # tabs:(0-center) text:"Pac-12 (PCC, AAWU, Pac-8/10) Membership History" NCAA national titles National Championship trophies, rings, watches won by UCLA teams]] Conference total |align=center|302"> 140 ''' '442' ' '''1406 ' 614 |align="center"|'''2020 ' 'through 2010-11 season (updated at end of school year)Summary: National Collegiate/Division I Men'sSummary: National Collegiate/Division I Women's * combined championships are counted in the men column ' 'Rivalries 'During the 1970s, UCLA and Notre Dame had an intense men's basketball rivalry. For several years, it was the only non-conference game in Division I basketball that was played twice a season (home-and-away). The most famous game in the rivalry was on January 19, 1974, when Notre Dame scored the last 12 points of the game to nip UCLA and end the Bruins' record 88-game winning streak. This rivalry is now dormant, partly because Notre Dame is no longer independent in sports other than football (Big East). Due to the unique geographic nature of the Pac-12 teams, the teams travel in pairs for road basketball games. For example, on Thursday, February 28, 2008, USC played Arizona and UCLA played Arizona State. Two nights later the teams switched and USC played Arizona State and UCLA played Arizona. The teams are paired as follows: USC and UCLA (the L.A. teams), Arizona and Arizona State (the Arizona teams), California and Stanford (the Bay Area teams), Washington and Washington State (the Washington teams), Oregon and Oregon State (the Oregon teams), and Colorado and Utah (the Rocky Mountain teams). Usually, the games are played on Thursdays and Saturdays with a game or occasionally two on Sundays for television purposes. This pairing formula is also used in women's volleyball. To make scheduling simpler for men and women's basketball (a sport in which each conference member uses a single venue for both teams' home games), the schedule for women's basketball is the opposite of the men's schedule. For example, when the Oregon schools are hosting the men's teams from the Arizona schools, the Arizona schools host the women's teams from Oregon schools the same weekend. This formula has made a tradition in conference play to keep track of how a team does against a particular region; and stats are kept at to how successful a team is against, for example, "the Bay Area schools" at home or away. Effective in the 2011-12 season, with the expansion into 12 teams, a 10-year rotation model has been developed to maintain the existing 18-game conference schedule. Teams remained paired with their regional rival. Each school plays its regional rival and six other teams both home and away, and the other four teams once - two at home and two away. The newest members, Colorado and Utah, are paired with each other. The single play opponents rotate every two years.http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/MBasketball/WklyRel/2011-12Pac-12HoopsSchedule.pdf ' '''Conference facilities ' '''Commissioners ' PCC ' *'Edwin N. Atherton 1940–44 *Victor O. Schmidt 1944–59 ' '''AAWU ' *Thomas J. Hamilton 1959–68 ' '''Pacific-8 ' *'Thomas J. Hamilton 1968–71 ' *'Wiles Hallock 1971–78 ' Pacific-10 ' *'Wiles Hallock 1978–83 ' *'Thomas C. Hansen 1983–2009 ''' *Larry Scott 2009–2011 ' '''Pacific-12 ' *'Larry Scott 2011–present ' References ' ' 'External links' * |} |} Category:NCAA conferences Category:NCAA Division I